vuk-thanks for the comment re artists on a curators list !!
it prompted me to articulate my thoughts on this
discussion on curators ethics and how the situation
arises for scientists, and ethical rules of conduct for
scientists who organises venues where the work of
scientists is presented
why is in that in the art world that there is a separate
professional category of "curator", but not in the science world
because there are no science curators,scientists get involved in many kinds
of 'service' activities
that help make visible the work of their scientific colleagues= in my
work as an astronomer I have worked as a book editor for
a collection of essays, on organising committees for scientific
conferences in astronomy and astronautics etc
as discussed by many here = there are 'general rules of conduct'
and then practicalities= indeed in general a scientist would not
present their own work in a venue that they are the organiser ,
or a journal where they are the editor in chief= and normally in
all peer reviewing or selection processes one is asked to 'declare
all conflicts of interest"= for instance often one refuses to peer
review work by scientists at ones own institution
but an example of my own violations of these general rules would
include;
a) our research group was developing a new emerging sub discipline
( extreme ultraviolet astronomy), we organised the first conferences and
books on the subject- and included the work of our own research group
in the books, and often invited ourselves as keynote speakers
this is a dilemma that many artists in the emerging areas of
art/science/technology
- in the early days of digital arts there were no curators paying attention-
so the
artists organised the venues, and naturally included their own work- this
seems to be fine
the same for art and biology, or nano art ( with the exhibition curated by
artist vesna for instance),
on the hand if a curator at a Museum of Modern Art organised a painting
exhibition that
included their own paintings= this would be a stretch ( except in the recent
rash of museum
of modern arts asking artists to curate from their collections)
b) I was chairman for a conference session in astronautics and didnt have
enough
papers to fill the session, so presented a paper from our own group to fill
out the
session. The abstracts were peer reviewed by the other session co chair but
it
would have been difficult for my colleague to turn down this paper !! On the
other
hand this was the only session in the conference which covered our work , so
i
couldnt submit the paper to another session where I didnt have a conflict of
interest,
so should i penalise our group because i had helped organise the conference
? I still
feel I violated something.
as i said at the beginning , in science we have neither official 'science
critics' nor "science curators' as separate
professions from science- ( its a good question as to why this is necessary
in the art world but
not in the science world)= we have science historians, but they are not
practicing scientists in general,
and philosophers of science=but they dont organise venues for scientists to
present their current research
mind you some would argue that we are in serious need of in depth science
criticism to help
reintegrate science into society !!!
roger
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Vuk Ĉosiĉ <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:24 PM
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] artist curator ethics
To: [log in to unmask]
Interesting how many artists you can meet at a curators mailing listi
--
Roger Malina is in France at this time
IN USA
phone 1 510 853 2007
When in France I can be reached at:
011 33 (0) 6 15 79 59 26
or (0) 6 80 45 94 47
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